10/30/2009 12:00:00 AM

Washington (Platts)--30Oct2009/303 am EDT/703 GMT
     As part of an ongoing comprehensive review of dam integrity of coal ash
impoundment sites nationwide, the US Environmental Protection Agency on
Thursday said that it has determined that an impoundment at American Electric
Power's Philip Sporn facility in West Virginia requires additional safety
testing. 

     An impoundment is a pond at a coal-fired power plant that holds waste
water and coal wastes in a slurry.

     Following the failure of an impoundment at the Tennessee Valley
Authority's facility in Kingston, Tennessee, in December 2008, EPA has been
conducting on-site evaluations at electric utility sites nationwide to
determine the impoundments' structural integrity. 

     A storage pond from TVA's Kingston coal-fired generating station was
breached and 5.4 million cubic yards of wet coal ash spilled into a nearby
river and covered about 300 acres surrounding the facility.

     Addressing the AEP facility, EPA said that while it "does not believe the
impoundment's dam is at immediate risk of failure given the information we
currently have, out of an abundance of caution the agency" has notified
officials in West Virginia and Ohio of the need for further testing to fully
determine the impoundment's integrity. 

     EPA spokeswoman Latisha Petteway said Ohio officials were notified
because the Ohio River is on the border between West Virginia and Ohio, so if
there was a spill from the facility, that river could be affected.

     AEP has committed to submitting a plan to carry out the safety tests and
said the plan will be provided to EPA on November 2, the federal agency said.
EPA said it will oversee the testing and use all necessary authority to assure
the safety of the facility.  

     As part of that effort, EPA contractors identified factors at the AEP
facility that are similar to the Kingston facility--specifically, both
facilities piled coal ash and bottom ash around the impoundment to raise the
impoundment's walls, EPA noted.

     To ensure the impoundment's stability, EPA is requiring AEP to conduct
two tests: a liquefaction test to determine if the foundation will become
unstable under certain pressures, and a slope stability test to determine if
the impoundment's embankment will fail under certain pressures. 

     To date, EPA has completed reports on assessments of impoundments for 22
facilities.

		--Paul Ciampoli, paul_ciampoli@platts.com

Similar stories appear in Coal Outlook. 
See more information at
http://www.platts.com/Products.aspx?xmlFile=coaloutlook.xml